Right away you should understand that in the early and mid-1950s, one did not use nicknames for coaches, particularly your high school football coaches, who had the power and respect, which enabled them to employ disciplinary tactics that could leave quite an “impression.”
Oh, you might do it in hushed tones on campus and more boldly off campus, but no player wanted to get on any coach’s “list.”
Elvis “Boots” Simmons was our head coach in my freshman and sophomore years. He was an All-American on the Texas A&M 1939 national champion team. He was also a World War II hero and was wounded in action in the European Campaign.
Boots was a nice guy … too nice, I think, to be a successful coach. Ultimately, he became an elementary principal and spent the remainder of his then-much-happier career there.
When he was my coach, I saw him do things that left me in awe. He could punt a football in a perfect spiral 70 yards on the fly.
During wind sprints – one of the great dreads in football practice – we lined up in a single row on a yard-line marker and across the field’s width. Boots stood a couple of yards in front of us and upon giving us the “hike” command to run, he’d run backwards and outrun us whether it was 10 yards or 50 yards. That was even with the steel plate in his left thigh, implanted because of a WWII wound. His stomach was always as flat as the palm of my hand. Boots stayed in tremendous shape.
In our freshman year, the varsity went 2-7 and in our soph season it was 4-5-1. That’s when Boots exited coaching and went into administration where he remained until retirement.
The only “damage” he ever did to me or anyone else that I knew of was with a paddle. The paddle was about 25-30 inches long, perhaps two inches wide and about a half-inch thick.
Boots paddled players who made bad grades. He drew back and made hefty swings. He had a low tolerance for poor academics, particularly when he knew you could do better.
He also wielded that paddle on your birthday. The only difference was, Boots didn’t draw back for that “celebration.” He’d hold the paddle about six-eight inches from your rear then use wrist action to make the pops. He paddled me on my 15th birthday and I had to “rest” every two-three licks.
Ed “J.B.” Hepler was my coach for the final two high school years. Jugbutt was a nickname assigned to him by us smart-aleck players. We sure didn’t use it in front of him or any teacher or administrator for that matter. And, frankly, he didn’t deserve that name. He was tough, demanding and a good coach.
If memory serves, we were 4-5 my junior year.
Hepler expected us to be in tip-top shape.
During pre-season practice calisthenics, there was a drill wherein you lay on your back and raised your feet/legs six inches off the ground. Then, on command you spread your legs as wide as you could. Often, during that part of the exercise, a cleated-shoe Hepler (6-1 and a pear-shaped 250) came and stood on your stomach. If you looked like you were weakening, he’d jostle just a bit to “get your attention.”
Teague High School played in Class A football through my junior year. In those days, classifications went from B through 4A.
For my senior year, we had 220 students in four grades, 10 more than the cut-off between Class A and AA, so we were moved into a AA district with Mexia, Hillsboro, Ennis and Waxahachie. Two years later, Teague dropped back to Class A while Ennis and Waxahachie moved to 3A, quite a disparity.
We began the season with five wins over Class A teams, including the champions of the district we’d just left, and had a non-district tie with one AA district title team. We began our district play with a 13-6 win in Hillsboro, then dropped three straight to Waxahachie (47-6), Ennis (25-6) and Mexia (7-0), a game I missed due to a leg injury.
Teague finished that season 6-3-1, not too bad for a small school in a big district.
Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor-publisher of more than 50 years experience.
wwebb@att.net
